The Universe Crack'd: Craig Ramsey, #3

By Chris Johnson

Psychic investigator Craig Ramsey returns home to discover shocking news.

He had died a year ago.

No one believes it is him. Not even his wife Brianna. And where is his daughter?

Worse still, the ghosts he once knew and communed with have vanished and are nowhere to be found. He is alone and confused in a strange world.

Until he finds a clue left behind by himself before he passed, which takes him on an even more dangerous adventure. Again, he is plunged into turmoil as he has to strives to solve the multiple disappearances of children across the city and state, infiltrate a clandestine government experiment, and save Statton from imminent destruction.

And through it all he has to survive the plots of a madman. An old adversary Craig once believed dead, who will do anything to ensure the psychic never returns from the grave again.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Johnson
• Release date: Dec 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201211721

Chris Johnson

Chris Johnson is a professor of English literature, specialing in Canadian drama and theatre, at the University of Manitoba. He recently co-directed Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with Margaret Groome for Stoppardfest 2007. Johnson was one of the first writers to bring the work of George F. Walker to critical attention, and he continues to write and give papers on Walker and dark comedy in Canadian drama.

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DEDICATED TO

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Chapter 1

Large eyes, silent as glass, gazed at the shapes sneaking through the dusk. Lightning flashed close by and briefly swallowed their silhouettes: three young humans. Angry thunder thumped and shook the ground, then rolled away into the night, before darkness returned enveloped the surroundings. A mere finger of dim yellow light danced across the nearby gravestones, illuminating the marks that scored their surfaces as the trio progressed.

Another lightning bolt, much closer, flashed, yet the watcher didn’t flinch, its focus riveted upon the teenagers under the tree in which it sat.

Hunger boiled its grumbling stomach. Loud and annoying, the creatures below posed no threat to it, but they had frightened its prey into hiding. Starving, it launched itself on its pinions towards the teenagers. It swooped three feet above their heads, causing one to flinch — much to his companions’ amusement — before it landed upon another tree’s branch and sat as though listening.

It’s an owl, you dork.

The boy puffed himself up to disguise his embarrassment. No! It was a bat. I saw its fangs. He flashed his torch after it. See?

It has tail feathers... See? The second girl rolled her eyes and shook her head with a disappointed sound. You can be such a pansy, you know?

James ignored the verbal dig and pointed to where his torch’s beam now shone. That patch there looks good.

He hadn’t wanted to come out tonight, anyway, but his crush on Tamsin had spurred him to follow. To his knowledge, she didn’t yet know James’ feelings. Or maybe she did because she enjoyed teasing him about things. But their friend, his best mate Amy, knew. She had invited him along to spend the night at Hilltop Cemetery.

Both girls were both into séances and spooky stuff. James didn’t go for that sort of thing, but he enjoyed the thrill. Besides, he had an Ouija board that had belonged to his father’s wife, which he figured was the perfect currency to impress his crush. And he loved the prospect of Tamsin grabbing him if something scared her, either, if the story of the woman in white held truth.

The rumours were that a phantom red-headed lady dressed in a long, flowing dress haunted the cemetery. Sometimes people glimpsed her at sunset as she walked along the path between the thick trees. She would walk towards a prominent large tree, then disappear into its wide trunk as if it had a door in it. But no one had ever learned where the spectral resident vanished. Nor did they know her name.

Whose idea was it to venture out through the storm? He hated wet weather, which he considered good for lazing in bed with a book, but not for traipsing in soggy clothes and risking a chill.

James followed Amy’s finger as she pointed at something. That’s the best place, she said, Over there. We’ll be right next to the tree and can watch when she appears. She led the way and dropped her backpack on the grass near a large tombstone.

Tamsin reacted to the noise. Careful! Don’t wake the sleeper.

Amy snorted with a laugh as James guided his torch beam across the words incised in the stone. The lad’s lips moved as he read the dates, his gaze thoughtful. I remember this guy. He died last year. My dad was friends with him.

Tamsin passed a cursory glance at it. So what?

Today is the first anniversary of his death.

Amy’s white teeth appeared to glow in the dark when she grinned. You’re such a romantic with anniversaries. Isn’t he, Tamsin?

James froze at the joke. Was she putting him on the spot on purpose? His crush shrugged and removed a blanket from her backpack to spread on the ground by the tombstone. He cleared his throat, glad the shadows hid his furious blush, as he wondered about the meaning behind her shrug. It was too soon to admit his feelings yet, and he didn’t want them to tease him about it, either. Not tonight.

Amy’s voice sound like she enjoyed the opportunity though. What do you reckon, Tamsin?

About what?

Does it turn you on when a guy remembers birthdays and anniversaries?

Tamsin flicked the raven-coloured hair from her face and pondered. Did her eyes flick towards him? He couldn’t tell in the gloom. I’d like a boy with balls and the guts to mean what he says.

Quick! Say something now. The thought raced through James’ mind, blurring by so fast he wondered if he should answer. By then, Tamsin had spread the thin blanket across the ground and was looking at him with an air of impatience. Well? she said, her demanding tone making him jump.

What?

Come on, doofus. Tamsin’s eyes rolled. The board!

James dipped into the bag, a painful flush of disappointment crossing his face. He sure was stuffing up a bit with Tamsin. Damn his awkwardness. Impressing her seemed an uphill battle. Give it to me. Amy snatched the board from him, which twisted a dagger of embarrassment through his heart.

Amy’s teeth flashed with a sly grin that only James had glimpsed. The bitch! She was enjoying this, making him squirm in front of Tamsin. Wasn’t she supposed to be on his side? He mouthed a What? to her, but she gave her head a slow shake. Wake up, she said with equal volume.

Amy put the board on the blanket and lit the candles, and the darkness retreated into the surrounding trees. Lightning flashed again. The tiny flames flickered in the breeze and went out. The shadows lunged forward, held at bay only by the lights of their torches. And the thunder rolled and rocked the ground under their feet.

Couldn’t we have done this at your place, Amy?

A grin of sadistic pleasure spread across her features like a spooky clown’s makeup. But she didn’t answer him.

With great deliberation, she put the wooden planchette onto the board that must have been older than Methuselah. Let’s get on with it.

James opened his mouth to protest, but Amy’s head shook and quietened his unspoken words.

The trio sat around the blanket on the grass. Shadows danced from the light of the re-lit candles.

The planchette! His jaw dropped.

Amy shot him an impatient expression. What’s wrong?

Tamsin’s voice trembled too when she replied. It moved. I saw it too. She pointed with a shaking finger. Look!

But we haven’t started yet.

Amy rolled her eyes to scoff at them when something caught her attention. A scraping sound. She spotted it and gasped as the planchette danced and skipped across the board by its own volition, its mahogany feet tapping and scratching the surface.

All three scrambled back in surprise. James knew Amy loved practical jokes, but her blanched features revealed all. This was no gag.

Then it jumped—a whole inch off the Ouija board—then landed with a clatter on its wooden castors. Its scraping sound reached their ears, scratching like fingernails on a blackboard. Like a dragonfly over a still pond, it strayed back and forth and pointed at the first letter.

H.

No sooner had Amy said it aloud than the pointer drifted towards the next one.

E.

We haven’t even started. Tamsin’s voice shook with horrified wonder.

The unseen force must have been waiting to be sure the teenagers understood. Upon their realisation of the starting word, it pushed the planchette faster.

C. O. M. E. S.

The wooden pointer stopped.

This was James’ first time in a séance, and the looks on the girls’ faces said it was theirs too. The board belonged to his father. He thought he would look cool if he brought it. Somehow, his gut told him this wasn’t the fun he expected.

Tamsin wondered aloud. Who comes?

The explosion came from nowhere. The lightning strike’s shock threw the trio from the board and the graveside. A terrible pain flared in James’ shoulder, paralysing it, when it collided with something hidden in the dark. A squealing noise pierced his ear drums, and his vision blurred. The strike had flung the girls away, too, tossing Amy onto a grassy patch. Tamsin lay sprawled elsewhere.

James wobbled on his legs, stumbling before trying to stand again. The ringing in his ears had dulled but remained like a persistent mosquito. Steadying himself on a tombstone, he stumbled towards Tamsin, one wobbly step at a time. Something told him to deal with her first, while another said he should get the hell out of there.

James tried to speak, but his voice was like an echo inside his skull.

Tamsin stirred at her name’s mention. She lifted her head as he flopped beside her. One smooth hand reached for him when he put his hands on her shoulders. The other stretched out and slapped him aside as she pulled herself to her feet and staggered away. He was aware of Amy running past, too, but missed her shouted words.

Then James saw it, another movement in the corner of his eye.

A hand stretched above the tombstone of the guy who had died a year earlier. It searched, scraped across the top, and reached forward again to grip the stone’s edge. Spiky brown hair jutted upward from behind it.

He comes?

Then the creature groaned, loud and mournful, like in the movies, but worse because this was real. The spiked head dropped out of view. Something slipped and thumped on the soft earth. Then strong fingers, crusted with mud and grassroots, gripped the stone’s top side, tensed and held the weight of the ragged thing that pulled itself up on shaky legs.

A sudden knot twisted in James’ stomach. His mouth gaped like Luna Park’s entrance as moisture and something warm and mushy filled his pants. Instinct drove his feet into carrying him from the dark shadow that rose from the grave.

Chapter 2

Thunder and lightning cracked the darkness again, but further away, and the creature pressed its palms against the side of its head. Ears ringing from the loud noises, it raised itself from the ground on unsteady limbs. One hand slipped across the headstone’s smooth rain-slicked surface as it stumbled to regain balance.

Ripples of pain radiated through its head as another lance of lightning flashed. Its fingers, encrusted with mud and slop, rested on the tombstone’s face. Then a spark of recognition ignited in its tortured mind.

What was that?

Patting his hands across the stone, he gripped the grave marker’s edges and leaned his head over it. Painful shards slipped through the man’s skull as he concentrated upon the images flooding his mind. Visions of a minister delivering a long-winded sermon filled his brain. Snippets of other things: the crunch of a spade in the earth, a gravedigger’s cuss, silent teardrops that fell and hit the ground, names, faces — some familiar, a few not. Then came the teenagers stealing through the night. Their hushed voices and giggles met his ears. Lightning flashed in his vision, and he spotted the tombstone’s inscription. A name — familiar, yet alive in a faint memory - flickered into his consciousness. His name! Craig Ramsey!

An anguished cry ripped past his parched lips. Startled, nearby birds chattered from the darkness, their chirps echoing through his mind as he stumbled and fled from the resting place.

It couldn’t be. No. Wouldn’t he remember that?

A protruding grave curb caught his foot. He tumbled to the ground in a heap. Yet he crawled forward still and lurched through the night until he reached a path that led him through an archway of trees that loomed overhead. He’d been to Hilltop Cemetery in recent memory, a lot. Yes. He had fought here. And won. Or did he?

Ahead, voices echoed through the night. Was it the cemetery’s residents? Maybe. But why weren’t more around?

One torturous step after the next, he pushed forward, fighting the dizziness that steered him like a drunken monkey from one side to the other. The voices — a male and a female - were his beacon, drawing him closer to their hushed conversation until he spotted them outside the graveyard’s wrought-iron fence.

Silhouetted by a pale yellow streetlamp, the couple didn’t notice him until he burst from the foliage and reached through the railings.

Help me, he tried to say, but only a dry, rasping stammer floated from his parched lips and throat.

Startled by his growl, one of them gaped open-mouthed at him. Although the light behind the woman’s face hid her features in shadows, enough illumination allowed him to see the horror that contorted her mouth. The man lashed out and swatted his outstretched fingers, then paused as he took in the creature’s appearance, and gasped. No! But you’re dead!

The woman screamed, a piercing squeal that hurt his ears, and tripped past her escort as they fled into the night.

He had died? Yes. That’s what they said. That confirmed his greatest fear. Yet why was he above ground and walking, hungry and thirsty and tired?

And the couple had recognised him!

One hand over the other, he scuttled along the fence, peering through the rails at the couple’s retreating figures, until he reached the gateway, then loped down the gloomy street.

Visions flashed through his mind as he lengthened his running stride and picked up speed. Memories. Fighting on the metal stairwell of the city’s main bridge with a man whose name he couldn’t recall. Flash of a gun’s muzzle followed by its thundering roar. Pain in his mouth, his teeth threatened to crack as they trapped a bullet between them. The red curtains covering his vision as he fell unconscious. Voices. A gorgeous woman’s features filling his sight when he opened his eyes, his head cradled in her lap as she ran soft fingers down his cheek. Beautiful tears shimmering on her face. Who was she? Her name teased the tip of his tongue. The other woman with the thick Scottish accent knew her, too, and addressed her with in a thick Scottish accent. She was familiar to him, too, but their names eluded him.

A bus whizzed past him on the street, its brightly lit interior signalling the warmth he craved. Anything would be better than the rain that suddenly bucketed from the sky upon his bedraggled figure.

Instinct drove him forward, pushing him down the streets until, at last, he entered the city. Here was a sea of faces and people that bustled their way along the footpaths and mall strips. Bright lights, colourful and gay, bounced everywhere with spiritual warmth. Familiar lyrics from a beautiful song rang through the air. Their notes resonated in his heart.

The first Noel, the Angels did say, was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay

It brought back more memories. Childhood. His sister — no, his cousin — taking him through the suburban streets to gawk at the Christmas lights.

Christmas?

It couldn’t be! It was Christmas when he —

How much time had passed since he died?

Strangers brushed past him. Random images popped to mind. Memories. But not his.

Why was that? Whenever he touched things or people, he heard and saw what they thought, what they had experienced. He didn’t know how, but he could do that.

Was he always able to do that?

The lyrics of I’ll Be Home For Christmas drifted to his ears and stirred emotions deep inside him. Yes! He needed to get home.

He changed course towards the river that snaked through the city. Something told him he if he kept following it past the tall Ferris wheel, lit up in blue like a beacon, he would reach his home. Wherever or whatever that was.

He shambled by the stores, lurching to avoid the people to save experiencing the torture of their souls’ voices in his mind: forgotten birthdays, angry spouses, first kisses, wishes, dreams, events. They all intruded in his brain, sometimes their sounds echoed in his thoughts; other times bright enough to blind.

At last, he reached a street that meant something to him. Yes! He didn’t know the name, but he knew the houses. But a few looked different somehow. Was it the trees? Maybe the guttering on that one had changed colour. Not that he could tell much without the same streetlights.

And there it was!

His bones aching, he dragged himself along the street, catching himself as he tripped on the footpath’s gutter. For there was his home. It looked different, but the house was the same.

He patted his pocket, reached into it, and retrieved his keys, and smiled. Soon he would be inside, warm and dry and safe from the downpour that he spat from his mouth.

The key stopped at the handle. Puzzled, the vagrant stared at the unfamiliar brass door knob. It was the same kind, with a ring of metal above it, which he always used to pull it shut, but where was the keyhole?

He arched an eyebrow and bowed his head to look closer, squinting at the pale grey light that glowed from the edges of a glass panel next to the door. He stood erect, one eye narrowed as he scratched his scalp. Since when did he have a palm-print reader installed? There was only one way to find out. He pressed his hand on the edges. It felt warm. Then, yes, more images flickered through his tired and scrambled thoughts. A familiar face appeared in the vision, but known only from photographs, or an associate. He struggled to remember how he knew or who it was.

Perhaps he had died. It just had not occurred to him that someone else would have moved into his home now, however much time had passed since that day. Why wouldn’t they? He was a member of the nearly departed, right?

The palm-print panel buzzed, its warning indicator glaring at him with a threatening red hue that blinked three times. Security lights thumped to life and bathed him in blinding whiteness. Pain speared his blinded eyes. He lifted an arm to shield them, staggered backward, and tripped into the nearby cacti. Their spikes impaled his leg and provoked a curse a moment before the door opened.

A boy of about fourteen or fifteen poked his head out, then looked down at him. Recognition flickered on the surprised boy’s face, then turned to horror. The lad was familiar to him, but from recent memory. A few hours ago. He’d seen him fleeing with two girls.

A wave of vertigo swept over the stranger, overwhelmed him as he hit his head on the concrete pathway. The boy’s voice echoed. Dad!

He mumbled in surprise. Dad?

Then the darkness took him.

Chapter 3

The first hints of Saturday morning presented themselves to Brianna as she slept. The grass, short from her father’s having trimmed it too low, provided no protection from the hard ground. Although cooler than the boiling bitumen road, the footpath’s close-cut lawn was hot enough to make her jog on the spot as she waited for the Mr Whippy van, which made its tortoise-like crawl along the street twice as unbearable.

She licked her lips in anticipation and imagined the velvet-smooth ice cream and how it would help beat the summer holiday heat when she sat under the mango tree in the backyard. Of course, her alsatian, Tango, would make her share it with him.

Then the dream world dissolved around her. The sun disappeared, and the room’s darkness surrounded her where she lay on the bed.

Brianna groaned, rolled over and patted the space beside her.

Empty.

The strains of Greensleeves floated past the lace curtain that danced with the warm breeze. Why do ice-cream vans always play the same tune? The imagined icy treat’s sweet chocolatey taste remained on her lips, which she licked, then disappeared. She stretched on the bed. The music grew louder as it approached her house, enticing her like a siren’s song to buy some, confusing her between the present and the dream that still lingered.

Downstairs, the screen door squeaked open, then slammed shut. The sounds of four-year-old feet running towards the van, which idled outside her home, followed. Brianna opened her mouth to call out for a chocolate cone, then stopped in hesitation.

Why was an ice-cream truck operating at this time of night? The first light of dawn was still young. No normal person had even thought of breakfast yet, let alone a sugary treat.

Hayley! Brianna had bolted downstairs and outside before she realised what she was doing.

An end of